The project is enhancing the learning outcomes of fieldwork-based geoscience education across a diverse range of undergraduate educational institutions. It is leveraging the power of modeling technology (COLLADA and GigaPan) and virtual globes such as Google Earth. A project-related Penrose professional conference at Google Headquarters is enabling a paradigm-shift among a cohort of academic experts and research assistants who are designing, developing, and implementing innovative virtual field trips. The virtual field trips are allowing geoscience students to act as free-agent learners guided by distributed teacher networks. The project is enabling students to explore a geoscience-enhanced Google Earth experience using models or "avatars" to represent themselves and their field vehicles. The virtual terrain is peppered with computer-generated rock outcrops and rock specimens that students are discovering and collecting as they solve problems as virtual detectives. The virtual activities are enabling students to lift and examine specimens, and allowing them to perform virtual physical and chemical analyses that are helping to guide their field mapping decisions. In addition to traditional field destinations, the project is providing a mechanism that allows students to visit and examine virtual places where real field trips cannot take them, including the vents of active volcanoes and the deepest ocean trenches. Students are playing the roles of first-responders in natural disaster scenarios and are exploring Paleo-Google Earths that correspond to a number of past geologic periods, thus expanding their appreciation and understanding of "deep time". The project is also enabling students to virtually explore the past and present environments of the Moon and Mars. Strong formative evaluation components are embedded throughout the project and are informing its development. A key feature guiding the development of the project is the use of technology to track students' actions and to log and scaffold their virtual field activities. By analyzing their actions and - by comparing of novice versus expert tracks - the project is assessing, in real time, the potential of each exercise to improve student learning while also providing instant feedback, encouragement, and guidance to the students.
In this collaboration involving Old Dominion University, James Madison University, and University of Alaska Fairbanks, my colleagues, students, and I created learning resources for undergraduate level geoscience education using Google Earth and related technologies. We used SketchUp (a program intended for creating 3D buildings in Google Earth) to make geological cross sections and symbols, and we used a 3D scanner to make virtual rock specimens which we georeferenced in their collection locations. We designed geological mapping and natural disaster first responder exercises and tested their efficacy in class by logging student mouse clicks and key strokes. Pre-/post-tests, think-aloud protocols, and logging by our external assessor showed statistically significant gains as reported in peer review literature. Resources were presented and explained at several hands-on faculty professional development workshops and are available at the project web site www.DigitalPlanet.org. Two PhD and two M.S. students completed their degrees and three of them are currently in educational careers.
